On Tuesday, Dr. David Morens, a former senior adviser to Dr.  Anthony Fauci at NIAID, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States by concealing federal records related to SARS-CoV-2’s origins.

He admitted to plotting to conceal federal records related to research on the covid virus’ origins by using his personal Gmail account to evade Freedom of Information Act requests.  According to the guilty plea, he conspired with others, including Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, to hide communications regarding controversial grant funding.

Dr. David Morens, the longtime senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (“NIAID”), pleaded guilty on Tuesday, 18 August, in Greenbelt federal court to conspiracy to commit offenses and defraud the United States.

The plea, entered under 18 U.S.C. § 371, caps a records scandal that began with emails in which Morens boasted about making federal documents disappear. According to the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), Morens faces up to five years in federal prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.

US District Judge Paula Xinis is overseeing the case, with sentencing scheduled for 12 November. His attorney, Tim Belevetz, said in a statement: “By pleading guilty today, Dr. Morens has taken responsibility for what he did and will continue to do so.” The plea agreement dropped four other charges from a five-count April indictment, including destruction of records and aiding and abetting, which each carried up to 20 years.

Conspiracy Details and Email Trail

The conspiracy, according to the plea agreement and stipulation of facts, ran from roughly April 2020 through at least June 2023. It began after the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”) terminated a grant titled ‘Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence’ that had been awarded to EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based non-profit that sub-awarded US taxpayer funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The NIH terminated the grant, in the Justice Department’s words, “based on allegations that [the Wuhan coronavirus] covid-19 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Prosecutors said Morens and his co-conspirators “agreed in writing to intentionally hide their communications from public view” by routing government business through Morens’s personal Gmail account, in explicit anticipation of Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) requests. Emails obtained by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed Morens telling correspondents, “As you know, I try to always communicate on Gmail because my NIH email is FOIA’d constantly.”

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